Monday 11 June 2012 09.29 EDT
First published on Monday 11 June 2012 09.29 EDT

Martin McGuinness is to resign his Westminster seat as Sinn Féin seeks to end "double jobbing".

McGuinness will step down as MP for Mid Ulster in order to continue as Northern Ireland's deputy first minister. He will continue as the assembly member for the mainly rural constituency.

The former chief negotiator for the republican movement during the peace process has also cast doubt on whether he will meet the Queen during her visit to Northern Ireland later this month.

McGuinness admitted that it would be a "huge ask" for him to shake hands with the Queen when she visited the Stormont parliament on 27 June as part of her diamond jubilee celebrations.

In recent weeks he had indicated he was open to the idea of meeting the Queen, but appears to have had a change of heart now. "As we speak, we do not have a doable proposition in relaton to this," he said.

There was anger over the weekend within Sinn Féin over a planned jubilee party for the Queen on the Stormont estate. The party's culture minister in the Northern Ireland power-sharing government, Carál Ní Chuilín, said she had not been consulted about the event and she would not be attending the function.

Sinn Féin confirmed McGuinness would be standing down as MP for Mid Ulster as the party's president, Gerry Adams, said its other MPs in Northern Ireland would resign their seats in the Stormont assembly.

"Over the past number of years Sinn Féin have been addressing the issue of elected representatives who hold multiple mandates. Our party policy has been to phase out this practice entirely," Adams said.

"We have recently completed this with MLAs [members of the legislative assembly] who also held positions at local council level, and are now moving on to address the issue of MPs who also sit in the assembly in a decisive way.

"Martin will resign as MP for Mid Ulster to concentrate on his work in the assembly and as deputy first minister. This will obviously necessitate a byelection for Westminster," Adams said.

The byelection will put pressue on the two main unionist parties to find a common unity candidate to win back the seat from the republicans. Sinn Féin, however, would remain favourite to retain the seat McGuinness won during the peace process.

The cross-community Alliance party said Sinn Fein MPs' policy of boycotting Westminster had left their constituents voiceless.

The Alliance's Craigavon councillor, Conrad Dixon, said: "While I welcome any other party ending double jobbing between the assembly and Westminster, the fact is they [Sinn Féin MPs] do not take their seats so there is not much for them to concentrate on."

"It is good to see that they are belatedly following my Alliance colleague Naomi Long's lead in ending double jobbing, even though she was two years ahead of them.

"While MPs such as Naomi Long have represented Northern Ireland in the House of Commons on issues such as air passenger duty, welfare reform, taxation and international issues that the assembly has no responsibility for, Sinn Féin have been voiceless by refusing to take their seats."